Laura Spalding, a local historian, has recently written a book about the history of the town Ivanhoe, California. One of the chapters is about the farming in the area called Venice Cove. Included is this picture of this crawler that is hauling oranges from the field to the packinghouse.

I checked with the Dinuba Boyajian Brothers and they have identified the tractor as a Holt Midget 18 hp. This picture was taken around 1915. I am currently farming this same ground today along with many of the same trees.

wow that would mean some of your orange are 100 yrs old I didnt no they would live that long thanks for sharing

Paul

Step 1 of orchard removal was described in a 5/31/14 post of this thread.

Step 2 happens after 6-8 weeks of drying time to get the correct moisture for the chips going to the co-generation plant. A 1000 hp CAT engine grinder is brought in to do the job assisted by 2 wheel loaders and an excavator. The chips are placed in large piles and then hauled 3 hours away to be burned for power. This 10 acre block generated about 25 truck loads.

Step 3 now involves hiring in a D10 N to rip the ground to 5 feet. There is a hardpan layer slightly softer than concrete that commonly occurs from 2 to 5 feet deep. This layer can be a few inches to a few feet thick. It is important to break this up for the new orchard. In this case the ground was ripped in both directions and the D10 could do about an acre an hour.

Mate the D 10 has no trunions does it ever have a blade or is it just used for ripping ? wouldnt have thought the wood chips would be worth going to all that effort for cogen it must cost a fortune run the 1000 hp motor alone let alone the wages the loaders and it still has to get to the cogen plant maybe power costs a lot more in the US of A than here ?

Paul

My guess is that taking them to the cogen is probably the only way to get rid of the waste wood. I'm sure that burning them would be prohibited in California. As dry as it is the pile would be there for many years to rot out. And yes, last time I was out there my electric bill was at 5 times the rate that I pay in MN.

"mrsmackpaul" wrote:

Mate the D 10 has no trunions does it ever have a blade or is it just used for ripping ? wouldnt have thought the wood chips would be worth going to all that effort for cogen it must cost a fortune run the 1000 hp motor alone let alone the wages the loaders and it still has to get to the cogen plant maybe power costs a lot more in the US of A than here ?

Paul

All this tractor does is ripping. Currently, it is running a day and night shift. My guess is that a blade would greatly complicate the moving as it is working a new location once or twice a week.

There are quite a few of us in the Ag community that not only are scratching our heads over the economics of this process but more importantly, we think it creates more air pollution than us just burning on site. A politician got it on his resume that he stopped Ag burning. Who needs science when you can spread around a little political correctness.

Sweet! Chrome undercarriage! lol hell just burn it all! at least it wouldn't be called a wild fire, its completely controlled nothing else around to burn.

Oh that's right the EPA would fine you, throw you in jail, take all your equipment sell your land ect ect. but they can control burn that's A ok. They are professionals, they are environmentalist! lol I think they are more mentalists than anything!

Funny you should talk about the " air pollution " of the two different ways eg burning on site or processing and carting to the cogen plant we have same type of discussion with burning sugar cane the green movement want us to stop causes to much air pollution but we as farmers know that to cut the cane green and make the harvester process twice as much cane with trash still on it and then we have to cart extra trash with less cane per cubic yard meter ect to the siding uses twice as much fuel it goes from 1 liter per ton to 2 liters per ton thats an extra 6500 liters just for my small farm or 8,000,000 ltrs for the area I farm in per year or are we better to have 20 - 30 cane fires which only last 15 minutes each night for 5 or six months ? I am no boffin with all the sicence of this but 8,000,000 liters of fossil fuel or burn a renewable ? I know which we will end up with which ever one gets the most votes

Paul

Both were delivered the same day. Both are located in Northern California.